


Something Big For Fifteen Minutes

by RedheadAmongWolves



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Arc Reactor, Immortal!tony, Immortality, Jarvis (Iron Man movies) Lives, Like barely there but so totally there, M/M, Minor Bruce Banner/Tony Stark, Non-Linear Narrative, Not Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Compliant, Not Iron Man 3 Compliant, Past Pepper Potts/Tony Stark, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Tony-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-26
Updated: 2016-07-26
Packaged: 2018-07-26 20:41:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7589311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedheadAmongWolves/pseuds/RedheadAmongWolves
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“That could run your heart for fifty lifetimes.”</p><p>“Yeah. Or something big for fifteen minutes.”</p><p>It isn’t fifteen minutes.</p><p> </p><p>In which Tony Stark is gonna live a hell of a lot longer than he originally planned, and he doesn't really know what to do with that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Something Big For Fifteen Minutes

“That could run your heart for fifty lifetimes.”

“Yeah. Or something big for fifteen minutes.”

It isn’t fifteen minutes.

+

The most bizarre part of it, really, is that that story can’t begin for a few more decades. He has to live this story first. Obie, New York, Ultron, Wakanda. Maybe even the story before that. Howard, Jarvis, Aunt Peggy. Pepper. It must be lived, because apparently that’s the one thing Tony has left going for him. Living.

A shit ton of living.

+

Natasha figures it out first, which doesn’t surprise Tony, though he thinks maybe she thought it would. But he saw it, recognized that shift in her eyes that happened somewhere between palladium and blowing up half of Malibu, where cold turned calculating turned comprehending. One morning in the empty tower kitchen she leans mock-casually on the counter and gives a long look at the blue glow coming from his shirt. Tony fights the urge to cover it.

“It keeps your heart beating,” she says. Her fingers are curled around a coffee mug.

“Yep.”

Her eyes lift to his, searching. “For how long?”

And it’s oddly a relief, to say it. It hadn’t felt like a burden until it wasn’t one.

“JARVIS drummed it up to somewhere around 4500.” _Years. Damn_. There’s the unspoken _If I don’t bite it before then_ , but Natasha hears it anyway. She doesn’t nod or protest or exclaim. Like near-immortality is a daily occurrence.

Well, they do know Steve. And Barnes. And two Asgardians. So hell, maybe it is.

She hums, and turns to leave, but not before pushing the still-full mug towards him across the counter.

“I won’t put it in the file,” she says over her shoulder.

“I woulda deleted it anyway.”

And that’s that.

+

Seeing all those stars didn’t put one damn thing into perspective. Pale blue dot, yada yada yada. Tony was already well aware of his own insignificance.

It was the free fall that changed everything.

He didn’t pass out until halfway down. Before that, though, for the eon-long seconds, he kept his eyes closed but he could feel it; feel the dead weight of the suit plummeting through the air, gravity’s bitch, every atom both aching and numb, his limbs no longer under his control as they lifted in the wind like his body was reaching for the scarless stretch of sky where the portal had been. Tony had never been homesick for anything before. But there, falling, he longed to have died in nothingness, instead of everything-ness.

But then there’s Hulk’s roar, and Tony’s awake, and he’s alive, _again, again_. How many goddamn more _again_ s is he gonna get before somebody up top realizes he’s not exactly deserving of them.

He looks up at the sky, and sees clear eyes looking back at him.

“We won.”

_Don’t waste your life._

All fifty of them.

+

“Tony?”

It’s Steve who never figures it out, who has to be told. Forty years later, just shy of a full first lifetime, Tony-- long dead Anthony Stark, buried with honors in Green-Wood Cemetery-- shows up at his door in Brooklyn with a bottle of wine and no goatee. After Tony had “died” thirty years prior, he’d dyed his hair bright red in a gas station sink outside Milwaukee and laughed himself half-mad. Ditched America and hid in Italy, dyed his hair black again and shaved the beard, bought a vineyard outside Tuscany and didn’t engineer a single thing for a decade. Bought a wrench again at a flea market in Florence on the ten-year anniversary. Nobody was looking for him; he hadn’t left anything behind.

But thirty years since Anthony Stark died, and Tony is antsy. He’d say the other word-- _lonely_ \-- but it gives him a bitter taste in his mouth. A bitter taste that reminds him he missed Pepper’s funeral, and Rhodey’s, and Natasha’s and Barton’s and Happy’s and _stop it, Stark, Jesus Christ_.

But Steve is still around, and Barnes. Thor went back to Asgard a couple decades ago, and Vision’s off in Wakanda or Nepal or maybe Myanmar. Bruce is in the wind, and will pop up again in another five years or so.

They really do know a lot of immortals, don’t they?

So Tony goes back to Brooklyn. Anybody who knew Tony Stark is either a senior citizen or dead, so he figures he’s pretty safe. Pulls on a Yankees cap just to piss off Rogers and finds his address. Knocks on the door like a neighbor asking for sugar.

“Hiya, Cap. Invite an old pal in for a drink?”

+

“How?”

“Not the wrong question, but not the right one, either.”

+

“Superheroes don’t live forever, Pep.” He says one night, when Pepper is at his dining room table, eating cold Chinese takeout and looking over some papers. They still have these nights every now and again, which he never fails to marvel at. Where it’s just them, enjoying each other’s company, no tension or awkwardness between them whatsoever, going about their own business and occasionally making a witty comment and sassy reply. Sharing a smile, sipping wine, and falling back into quiet.

Pepper looks up at him and _when did she get reading glasses?_ “I know, Tony,” she says, a tiny crease appearing between her eyes. She sets down her papers. “You’ve got a high-risk job, we both know that.”

“Good. Great. Just wanted to… clarify that.” He’s elected, perhaps (definitely) stupidly, to warn her about his fast-approaching “death” rather than his never-ending life. At least there’s no omelet this time.

“Is there something you’re trying to tell me?” She asks, the crease deepening.

Tony grabs the wine bottle, reaches for her glass and refills it with a plastered-on smile. “Not a thing, Miss Potts.” It’s easier this way, he thinks. It has to be.

He revised his will last week. Everything is Pepper’s, and Pepper’s family’s. Everything. And it almost feels like not enough.

“...Okay, Mr. Stark.” She answers, with a quirk of a suspicious smile.

Tony’s heart feels like it’s breaking.

+

“Why?”

“That’s the million-dollar one, old buddy of mine.”

+

Him and Steve was the biggest surprise in the entire universe and that’s coming from a guy who’s gonna live for five thousand years.

But it happened. It’s there. Barnes rolls his eyes every time he sees them and Bruce, when he blew into town, laughed and said something that sounded suspiciously like “finally,” so maybe it wasn’t a surprise to anybody else, but Tony’s not complaining. Steve laughs and cries and cooks and draws and _lives forever_ and he’s the most human superhuman Tony has ever known.

Steve kisses like he has all the time in the world and it makes Tony want to cry. It took them a damn long time to get there, but it’s gonna stay there for a damn long time now that it’s there.

+

Bruce helps him fake his death.

Bruce, who hasn't aged a year despite having lived nine. Bruce had come to Tony’s lab with a printout of Tony’s old blood tests, had mumbled something about curiosity before asking a big, wet, gooey _“Did you know?”_

“Um, yes?” Tony replied, uncertain.

“Thank God,” Bruce breathes. “I thought I was going to be all by myself. Lord knows The SteveAndBucky Show would’ve driven me crazy.” He spreads out another page of tests, and Tony’s heart stops and restarts behind the arc reactor. He wonders why he hadn’t put it together earlier. _You can’t kill me, I know, I’ve tried._

Tony gapes like a fish.

“It’s funny how they’re different,” Bruce says quietly, eyes flitting to Tony’s face and darting away again. “Not dying, versus living.” He smiles nervously and looks at Tony long enough for him to see hope in his bright green eyes.

“Wanna not die together?”

+

“Wanna live together?”

+

_Don’t waste your life._

+

“What are you gonna do with fifty lifetimes?” Barton cackles and takes a swig of his beer, dangling his feet over the edge of Avengers Tower’s roof.

“I don’t condone drinking and perching,” Tony says, walking over to sit beside him. “Did Nat tell you?”

He’s levelled with an unimpressed stare.

Tony raises his hands defensively and chuckles. “How’d you figure it out then?”

“Overheard you talking to JARVIS. Don’t act like you didn’t know, you’re the one who made the vents big enough for me.”

Tony hadn’t known, actually, but he lets Clint think he’s clever. He nods in agreement. “One of these days you’ll tell me how you get through those without JARVIS noticing you.”

“Not a chance in hell, old man.”

+

“So what _are_ you gonna do with fifty lifetimes?”

“Sit on the beach. Read some books. Learn how to tap dance. Watch all nine seasons of Seinfeld on continuous cycle. Start a knitting club. Become a supervillain. Collect art. Have a cooking show. Keep saving the world until it begs for merciful death. Who the hell knows.”

He isn’t gonna waste it.

+

Someday, Steve will die. So will Bucky, and Bruce. Vision will probably get struck by lightning and short circuit or maybe just become a new God for a new Earth. Maybe Tony will die first, which isn’t impossible. But someday Steve will die, and Tony will be alone again, but until then he’s happy, and warm, and loved.

Tony has already seen the stars. But he has a few thousand years and a few billion dollars, so he might as well have some fun with them. NASA is always fishing for funders, and Iron Man is a pretty good CV for astronaut.

Steve might die before then, or maybe come with him, and die after. But Tony doesn’t think that he’d be lonely, even then. It took him a few more lifetimes than the average person, but he might have figured out what that _meaning_ was.

_I have a family. And I will see them when I leave here._

 

Fin.

**Author's Note:**

> Potentially the springboard for a series? Who knows. I've been planning this since I saw Avengers back in 2012 and finally wrote it all out at one in the morning four years later. I just have a huge thing for Immortal Tony Stark and I'm never gonna feel guilty about it.
> 
> I don't own anything MCU, obviously. 
> 
> Thank you all so gosh diddly darn much for your incredible comments. You're making my heart SING. Stay wonderful and may lovely things come to you because you've all been so so kind.
> 
> find me on tumblr @ murdockofthebay


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